There seems to be two takes on Donald Rumsfeld's resignation/walking the plank. On the one hand, there's the "Brilliant Timing!" strategy, which Mario Loyola of National Review sides with:

What's interesting about the timing is that this morning we woke up to a new Democratic congress, and by the time of the evening news everyone was talking about the new secretary of defense. Another suspiciously well-timed blockbuster announcement from the White House.

On the other, there's the "are you kidding me?!" timing, of which Dean Barnett is a proponent of:

In my travels through America’s ranking conservative circles the last few months, it is no exaggeration to say that the only praise I ever heard regarding Donald Rumsfeld came from my own mouth. As unpopular as Rumsfeld had become in liberal circles, he was even less well liked in conservative circles where his brusqueness and arrogance were not just the stuff of legend but were experienced first hand. Frequently.

So I was stunned when President Bush told the nation a week before the election that Donald Rumsfeld would be remaining through the end of his term. First, this hadn’t squared with what I had heard from insiders who tend to be reliable in regards to such scuttlebutt. Second, this seemed like a maladroit play since the only conservative I knew who really wanted Rumsfeld to stay was me. While I was flattered that the White House would go to such lengths to ensure my enthusiastic support (perhaps they saw how I had personally sunk the Allen campaign with a few withering phrases), the gesture really wasn’t necessary.

Thus it was a bizarre coda to the election season when the President “resigned” Rummy yesterday. If he was going to deep-six the SecDef, it would have made a lot more sense to do it a few months earlier and signal a “new direction” in Iraq (however bogus or fanciful) to a country that genuinely pined for one. Moreover, if he was going to fire Rummy the day after the voting was done, why did the President alienate undecided voters by falsely declaring his intention just days earlier to go to the mattresses on behalf of his beleaguered Pentagon chief?

It makes no sense. There’s not enough lipstick in the world to preetify this pig of a political move. The White House’s political operations seem to be perpetually stuck in Katrina-mode, and that’s not good news for any of us.

On the upcoming Pajamas Blog Week In Review this week, Glenn Reynolds posits that the fifth anniversary of 9/11 would have been perfect timing for Rumsfeld's resignation to be announced, with both a historical event for cover, the chance for a positive spin put onto it, and the ability for Republican candidates to hit the stump discussing the new approach to Iraq that Dean mentions above. Throwing him overboard yesterday, makes President Bush look small, as Mark Steyn is noting to Hugh Hewitt today, even as I'm typing this, paraphrasing the remarks he wrote on his Website yesterday:

To fire him mere hours after the polls closed makes the President look small. I'm reminded of when Harold MacMillan fired some of his closest cabinet colleagues 45 years ago, and Jeremy Thorpe stood up in the House of Commons and wryly remarked: "Greater love hath no man than to lay down his friends for his life."

Update: Here's a parody of a Rumsfeld interview, in which the hologram of Rumsfeld himself parses the "Political Jujitsu" theory:

Nobody saw this move coming yesterday. Nobody was prepared. It was a brilliant shifting of weight. Yesterday was supposed to be the Democrats big day. They were all going to wear new suits and dresses and give speeches congratulating themselves and talking about how they were going to fix the country. Instead all the news programs spent that time speaking about my resignation and today all the print media will be talking about me and my successor. The Democrats can't even complain because they have been practically begging for my resignation. By the time this dies down - nobody will want to look at their new suits or pretty dresses and they sure won't want to hear their flowery speeches because the time would have been well past that. The bonus is that the Main Stream Media doesn't even see how they were used. Brilliant move by the President.

ALR: But Mr. Secretary are you saying your tenure as Secretary of Defense was ended simply to control news cycles?

Rummy: Goodness no. When all is said and done I will be the longest serving Secretary of Defense in history. All Secretaries of Defense step down. This just happened to be the right time for me and if the President was able to time the announcement to take the wind out the sails of some blowhards well then that's just gravy. The important thing to me is that our brave men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are honored and protected and I think this resignation helps with those ends.

ALR: Again Mr. Secretary I apologize but I don't follow your reasoning.

Rummy: Well Chris you understand the process involved here correct? It will be a few months before Bob Gates even gets his confirmation hearing. The administration will be able to use the confirmation hearings and my farewell tour to reinforce the case of what we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Read the rest. When the memoirs and the latest Bob Woodward-style inside looks start coming out in the ensuing years, months, or heck, weeks, based on quickly the media moves these days, I'll be curious to know the real reason.

More: "GOP furious about timing of Rumsfeld resignation".